Sealant, mastic, adhesive, glazing, caulk and glue composition can be packaged in a metal, plastic, plastic coated or impregnated paper cartridge that is adapted to be loaded into an extrusion device such as a caulking gun for dispersing the sealant composition. Typically, the cartridge comprises an elongated cylindrical body with a nozzle fitted to an exit orifice. A movable diaphragm or piston is disposed within the cylindrical body at an end opposite the nozzle. The cavity defined between the piston and top end contains the sealant composition.
The cartridge body can be a soft squeezable container made of paperboard, cardboard or corrugated fiberboard. The tube has a round or oval profile and hollow interior adapted to contain a thick liquid such as sealant, mastic, adhesive, glazing, caulk or glue composition.
The cartridge is filled with sealant, mastic, adhesive, glazing, caulk or glue composition by various processes. Russel, EU0035409 discloses a cartridge filling apparatus for filling cartridges with a viscous material such as mastic, the apparatus including a loading station, a cartridge filling station, a cartridge capping station and a packaging station. An endless chain conveyor conveys individual cartridges successively from the loading station to the filling station where each cartridge is filled in turn and then to the capping station where each filled cartridge is capped. The cartridges are then dropped from the endless conveyor into the packaging station, which ensures that cartridges are correctly orientated for packaging and directs the cartridges into a suitably positioned packaging such as a cardboard box.
Petrovic, U.S. Pat. No. 6,176,369 proposes a puck carrier system for a conveying circuit. The circuit comprises a conveyor with lateral guides that selectively and slidably engage a portion of the carrier puck to prevent rotation of the puck during advancement. The puck comprises a main body having a rotational axis. The puck has a grooved flat bottom to many orienting grooves and has tapered fingers that provide guidance to a loadable container such as a pouch. The fingers are defined by cutting grooves that are required to provide a pouch carrying configuration that may be of nearly equal width to the puck carrying cavity. However, the Petrovic puck is unsuitable to transport and load cartridges that that are narrower than the precise barrel of the puck or that have extended nozzles.
Schwerdtel et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,874,022 is an example of another filling process. Schwerdtel et al. discloses a filling station that includes a filler valve, a positioning and centering device for positioning and centering cartridges in a position in alignment with the filler valve and a displacement drive for adjusting the position of the positioning and centering device and the filler valve in relation to each other. The positioning and centering device comprises a unit having a contact surface for the cartridges and a vacuum suction holder disposed in the unit. The vacuum suction holder comprises a suction hose having an open end disposed in the unit. The open end of the suction hose extends beyond the contact surface and is in the shape of a bellows.
The conveying systems for filling a cartridge repeatedly manipulate the cartridge causing wear to surfaces of the puck. Repeatedly manipulating the cartridge causes failures. The failures result in crushed cartridges, down time, and wasted manpower. Down time on a loading device directly leads to down time on a filler and capping apparatus. Smith et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,897,090 proposes a carrier puck to address the misalignment and collapse problem. The Smith et al. puck comprises a) a generally cylindrical housing having a central axis and a tube receiving opening at one end of the housing to provide access to an interior space of the housing and an end cap at an opposite end of the housing, and b) a spring supported on the end cap and having a plurality of spring arms projecting upwardly from the end cap toward the tube receiving opening, the spring arms being angularly spaced around the interior space of the housing.
Transport pucks are often involved in processes for filling cartridges. The pucks receive, support and stabilize the cartridges as they are advanced along automatic filling and assembling stations. Conveyors move the pucks with the cartridges from station to station. A conveyor may be a moving belt extending between opposing guide rails that maintain the pucks properly positioned on the moving belt.
Conveying and filling devices for the pucks can include a conveying track such as a belt or chain and a plurality of workstations. The cartridges to be filled are arranged slidably in relation to the tracks. Pucks are s conveyed along a conveying track that includes a plurality of work stations. Filling and handling caulk and sealant cartridges presents packaging and filling problems. The cartridge tube elongated shape in addition to a nozzle at one end imparts a cartridge a high center of gravity in vertical alignment, particularly when vertically aligned in a nozzle-down orientation. The high center of gravity is especially a problem when the cartridge is filled with a dense viscous material. Further, the dispensing nozzle protrudes from the cartridge at the only available flat surface on which the cartridge can be set during filling. A problem with nozzle-down cartridge filling devices is that the cartridge holders or pucks wear as they are used. Wear on the puck bottom is difficult to observe. The bottom ear can be uneven so that the holder or puck s tilted to an imbalanced position. As the puck is imbalanced it becomes increasingly difficult to properly load nozzle-down cartridges. The cartridges are angle loaded so that the nozzles strike puck walls, chipping puck lips or damaging the cartridge nozzles. The damage nozzles do not seat properly into the pucks and can break off and become lodged into the conveying system. Improperly seated cartridges and lodged nozzles become interfere with the continuous filling device by becoming intertwined in the device mechanism causing system damage and down time. Prior art wear indicators are insufficient. A single bottom face indicator can be difficult to observe d through the conveying machinery. Additionally, since the indicator provides information on wear at only a single location on the puck base, tipping can become a problem even when the indicator indicates minimal wear
There is a need for easily discernible indicator mechanism that will provide accurate information on degree and location of wear on the bottom of nozzle down cartridge pucks